Foundational Assumptions

There’s a saying about what happens when you assume, but the fact is that we all have to make assumptions at some point. You can’t build a structure without some baseline support like footings or piers; and you can’t build a theory, a philosophy, a worldview without some basic assumptions. In engineering, a common assumption is that a few test borings on a job site will inform you of the soil conditions across the site enough to complete your foundation design safely. We assume uniformity unless the test borings indicate otherwise. Some of the areas of my state are notorious for holes and caverns called karst formations. A geotechnical engineer colleague told a group of us of one case of a test boring showing solid rock about 10′ from a proposed footing location, only to pour the concrete footing and not fill up the hole. The reason: the concrete dumped in the hole had broken through the roof of a previously unknown small cavern…. Site uniformity is sometimes a very inappropriate assumption. Hopefully, like good structural foundations, your foundational assumptions for your beliefs are well-grounded. For instance, whether you believe that objective truth exists will determine a great deal of what you can reasonably believe. I say “reasonably” because one can, of course, believe whatever one wants, but if you want to hold reasonable views that are not self-contradictory or absurd in their actual application, then you need to have good foundational assumptions.

On what do you build your worldview? Relativism is the view that truth is relative to each culture, time, or even to each person in some forms. It is a lot like soil sensitive to a process called liquefaction. It seems to support weight alright when things are good, but when an earthquake hits, it turns to quicksand and provides absolutely no support. Scientism, the idea that science, or more specifically, the scientific method, is the only way of knowing truth, is a lot like those problematic karst formations. The scientific method, and science in general, is rock-solid in its area of applicability. Where it’s dangerous is when used outside of those areas. Science is great at describing stuff in the natural world, at telling us what is. My whole career as an engineer is predicated on science’s correct descriptions of the way the natural world works. Where it falters is when it’s asked to prescribe, to tell us what ought to be. We can do social experiments to see if people are selfish or mean or hateful, but science can’t tell us why they ought not be that way. In the areas it was designed to be used, science is trustworthy, but outside of those areas, it’s like building on Swiss cheese. Atheism and secular humanism often go together, as one denies God while the other elevates man to God’s position of ultimate authority. Yet this has turned out to be like building in a swamp full of peat and other “compressible material”: the higher one tries to build, the more weight one puts on the foundation, and the more it sinks. As the last century’s experiments in Communism – which were solidly and proudly atheistic – proved, man without God makes for a foundation of morality that sinks to frighteningly awful depths. Is there anything solid we can build a philosophy of life on?

There’s a saying that to build high, you have to dig deep. In other words, a house may be able to sit on a simple slab-on-grade, but a skyscraper will often have foundations going several stories underground. And when you dig down and hit something solid like Manhattan bedrock, you have the makings for some of the tallest buildings in the world. When building your framework of beliefs, some ideas will be necessarily self-limiting. They simply can’t hold up under examination. On the other hand, the Christian worldview is able to encompass all of reality because it is uniquely authored by the Creator of all reality. That is why Jesus was able to compare those who heeded His words to those building on rock:

“Therefore everyone who hears these words of Mine and acts on them, may be compared to a wise man who built his house on the rock. And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and slammed against that house; and yet it did not fall, for it had been founded on the rock.Everyone who hears these words of Mine and does not act on them, will be like a foolish man who built his house on the sand.The rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and slammed against that house; and it fell—and great was its fall.”
– Matthew 7:24-27, NASB.